名人故事之Cliff Kushler

Cliff Kushler, Swype输入法的发明人

• Cliff Kushler发明了T9键盘，并且是Swype创始人之一
• Kushler过去的工作集中在残疾研究和软件开发
• 这个软件怪人甚至想找到一种方法让电脑和海豚交流

上世纪90年代，Kushler发明了手机T9键盘，帮助人们提高手机输入效率。在此之前，他为残疾人开发过一款曾经很流行的语言输入方式，叫做gizmo 。

现在，Kushler已经58岁，伴随着Swype，他再次重新思考键盘的输入方式。

Swype的技术能够让用户手指不离开屏幕而输入一个词语，具体来说就是在键盘上按照词语字母顺序滑动，输入法自动识别路径输入词语，用户不用担心滑动路径弯曲，因为Swype能够自动并且很精确的识别出用户想要输入的词语。

在Swype还没有进入Android Market的时候，公司开放了beta版本测试。在短短的时间内，他获得了超过500000的下载量。在触摸屏上输入原本就是一件苦差事，即使是最熟练的BlackBerry使用者，都不能和Swype的输入效率相比。

为了展示这项技术的巨大进步（leap forward），三星电子召集了一批年轻的办公一族，在Swype西雅图的总部现场演示。 Franklin Page用Swype和一部三星手机打破了世界文字输入吉尼斯纪录（Guinness world record for text-messaging speed）。

但是在八月， Page的短暂记录就被英国人，Melissa Thompson，打破了。她同样适用了Swype。

“It has the potential of moving the needle a little bit on how people use their phones,” Kushler said of his invention, with a healthy dose of his legendary modesty.

Swype CEO Mike McSherry is more blunt about his goals. “I want Swype to be everywhere,” he said.

A man of faith and ethics

Kushler像一个圣人，有着白色的头发，a more-salt-than-pepper（不会翻译，囧） beard和温暖的笑容。他说话缓慢并且非常仔细。

A resident of Ananda Village, a small commune at the foothills of the Sierras near Nevada City, California, Kushler and his wife meditate for about an hour every morning. He almost always finds time for the daily ritual, though he still hasn’t made time to chat with dolphins.

“I’ve delved into different kinds of spiritual pursuits on and off for decades,” Kushler said. “My wife and I are very serious about it.”

“I think ideas flow from – I don’t know – different places,” he added. “I don’t think everything that’s come out of me is something this little brain has generated. I don’t want to say I’m channeling somebody or something, but I think [meditation] opens you up to a higher level of intuition.”

On one of his semiregular trips to San Francisco, Kushler met a CNN reporter for lunch. Sitting with perfect posture, attained through yoga and martial arts training in his youth, he took infrequent sips of tea and bites of rice with chopsticks wielded expertly.

Friends describe him as humble, mystic, honorable and brilliant.

“Everybody loves and respects and follows Cliff,” Swype CEO McSherry said in a recent interview. “He has incredible business ethics.”

Convincing McSherry, a co-founder of cellular carrier startups Boost Mobile and Amped Mobile, to join Swype was tough. McSherry was weary of having to negotiate deals with cell phone manufacturers, Kushler said.

“I wanted somebody with experience in the mobile field, but a lot of it was just a person-to-person connection,” Kushler said. “I just saw sort of a kindred spirit in Mike.”

Trust quickly grew between the two. McSherry worked on Swype for six months without a contract – “not even a verbal statement of exactly what the understanding was,” Kushler said – but trusted that he’d get a fair deal.

Helping the disabled speak

Kushler’s path to improving typing on phones was preceded by work on helping the disabled communicate. And before that, dolphins.

As a young man, the Michigan native spent time as a self-described “hippie vagabond.” He traveled around the country in his car – “my dog and I, and a backpack and a guitar,” he said.

Destination: California, to find a scientist named John Lilly, who was working on a computer interface that would allow him to speak to dolphins.

“I got obsessed with whales and dolphins and the idea that there’s another form of consciousness on this planet,” Kushler said. “We don’t have to wait for E.T. to land in Washington to have some other intelligence to talk to.”

Kushler still believes this, but he keeps getting sidetracked.

“I decided before I went [to find Lilly] that it would probably be much more effective if I actually had some skills in the computer realm,” he said. “So I decided to go back to school and study computers, so that I could someday talk to whales and dolphins.” At Michigan State University, he met John Eulenberg, a professor and director of the Artificial Language Laboratory. Kushler said he explained to Eulenberg that he’d taken only one computer class in his life but that he wanted to join the college’s master’s program to eventually have a chat with some aquatic creatures.

And Eulenberg said OK. Eulenberg was one of the earliest researchers in augmentative communications – helping disabled people talk – and continues to teach today. He introduced Kushler to his field, and Kushler said the professor was a major inspiration. “If you look at the nature of the things that [Kushler] has worked on, they’re ways of liberating people in big ways,” Eulenberg told CNN in a recent phone interview. “He believes in doing good.”

Kushler didn’t graduate from Michigan State. Instead, he took a scholarship to study at the University of Tokyo, where he eventually earned a degree in computer engineering with a focus on disability communication. There, he became fluent in Japanese. (He’s currently helping to develop the Japanese version of Swype’s keyboard.)

After school, Kushler worked on a system called the Liberator, which became a leading communication device for people who couldn’t speak. The system uses a sort of shorthand with graphics and letters representing vocabulary words. Press $-W, and the Liberator says, “I want.”

Work on augmentative communications technology became the basis for many of Kushler’s breakthroughs. T9 came from T7, which was eye-tracking software for text input designed to help paraplegics. And the new keyboard for smartphones came from an idea about an input method for the disabled, set forth by Swype co-founder Randy Marsden.

While it quickly morphed into a mainstream product, Swype set aside a chunk of its seed money for funding disability applications. Making use of this is one of Marsden’s primary initiatives, Kushler said.

Rethinking how we write text messages

In the mid-1990s, Kushler, along with Dale Grover and the late Martin King, invented a method for quickly inputting text on a standard phone keypad. Called T9, the technology allowed users to press fewer buttons in order to type words.

Rather than pressing 44-33-555-555-666 on a keypad to spell “hello,” as early texters did, T9 reduced that to simply 4-3-5-5-6. The software guesses what you meant to type from a dictionary, and if it flubs, you can cycle through other options.

At the time, “text messaging wasn’t that big,” Kushler said. “It was sort of taking a leap of faith that this would be any kind of commercial success.”

Like his later bet on touch screens with Swype, this, too, paid off.

“Cliff is a smart guy, able to do great things with technology,” Grover, his former partner, wrote in an e-mail. “Cliff is the voice of reason in situations where others of us were overreacting or not seeing the big picture.”

And the big picture, it turned out, was that T9 made people drastically faster typists and reduced the frustrations with inputting text on a phone. And that was the selling point.

Tegic Communications, the Seattle parent of T9, initially ran into resistance from cell phone makers because they rarely licensed technology at that time and failed to see the benefit of Kushler’s software.

It didn’t help that early T9 versions used a nonstandard keypad layout that Kushler says was five times more efficient. Letters seemed awkwardly grouped together on each number. When Tegic finally bowed to pressure and changed its layout to a standard ABC keypad, phone makers took notice. Samsung was the first to sign on.

Tegic also met with cellular carriers to show them the magic of T9.

“We were going out to the carriers and saying, ‘Look, if your phones have this technology, people are going to write more text messages. You’re going to make more money!’ ” Kushler recalled. “So we got them to, in some cases, dictate [to handset makers]: ‘You must have this technology on your phone.’ ” Soon, most cell phone manufacturers were eager to sign deals to carry T9. This tactic – of convincing cell carriers so that they put pressure on their handset partners – has been a key to Swype’s business, too.

AOL acquired Tegic for an undisclosed sum in 1999, when more than 90% of wireless makers were already licensing T9. About seven years later, AOL sold Tegic to Nuance Communications for $265 million.

During his year at AOL following the acquisition, Kushler tried to persuade the internet giant to invest in an idea to help deaf people. Because of AOL’s dial-up modem business, the company was “in this amazing position,” he said, to bridge the gap between the Web and the then-limited devices for the deaf.

After what he described as “total noninterest” from executives, he left AOL.

Big goals for Swype

Swype’s popularity has risen almost in line with the excitement over touch-screen phones. Kushler began developing the technology out of his home more than eight years ago.

Early development was done on Hewlett-Packard’s iPAQ, a touch-screen phone with a stylus. This was long before touch-screen interfaces were anything more than a gimmick serving a small niche.

Kushler’s son was 2 when development began, and the child and app grew up together. When Chanda Kushler was 4, he Swyped his first sentence: “I love hot cocoa.”

On a computer keyboard, Kushler does “three- or four-finger chicken poking,” he said. With Swype, he can type at 60 words per minute. But “I don’t actually text that much,” Kushler said.

Microsoft has taken an interest in Swype, and executives from the two have had several meetings in which executives from the software giant have asked about Swype’s “ambitions,” McSherry said. But Microsoft has locked its new Windows Phone 7 system from third-party keyboards like Swype’s.

Apple, too, took an early interest in Swype. The companies have had at least two meetings, one as recently as a few months ago, McSherry said.

“These companies don’t want to license Swype,” McSherry said. “They want to buy us.” An Apple executive asked Swype to build a version for the iPhone but said it was unlikely that the company would make an exception to allow the app to replace the iPhone’s stock keyboard, McSherry said.

So Swype is using an everywhere-else strategy. In addition to apps for Android and the older Windows Mobile, Swype has versions running on Microsoft’s Windows desktop system, ones for televisions that use Nintendo’s Wii remote and ones for touch-screen car navigators.

Swype hopes to bring its technology to the screens in airplane headrests. Another team is “very close” to having a prototype working on Microsoft’s Kinect camera hardware, which lets you wave your arms and wiggle your fingers to quickly type letters. Today, Swype is based in Seattle and employs 50 to 60 people, including contractors. Despite its success, Kushler has ideas for improving his product. He hopes to eventually enable Swype’s software to interpret sentence syntax and process language to more reliably guess words.

“Swype is maybe 97% accurate,” Kushler said. “Getting that last little bit of accuracy improvement is going to depend on more intelligence about narrowing down – well, what are the words that make sense in the context?”

He’s also busy working on adding other languages and accessibility features to Swype. So when will Kushler find time for working with sea mammals?

“I think you retire and get yourself a sailboat and go sail around Hawaii and find some friendly dolphins,” he said with a laugh. “I think I may have to wait until my next lifetime for that one.”

来源：CNN

名人故事之Russell Kirsch

原文标题:我的奇遇：做从未被做过的事

我在波特兰的一家咖啡店坐下，打算做点事，赶着回复一些邮件并写另外的一篇博文。

大概工作了 30 分钟后，一位看起来有 80 岁的老者拿着一杯热咖啡和点心坐到了我的旁边。我朝他微笑，点点头，然后又将视线收回到我的电脑继续工作。

“你喜欢苹果吗？”他指着我刚买没多久的新款 Macbook Air。

“嗯，我已经用了一段时间了。”当时我正想是不是要和这位陌生老人在波特兰咖啡店开展一场有关 mac 和 pc 机的辩论。

“你用他们编程吗？”他问我。

“哦，我并不是很懂怎么写代码，不过我有写东西，也花了很多时间在做线上的项目，还帮客户管理他们的生意。”

“我最近在反对苹果公司。他们想让所有人都用 iPad。而当人们用 iPad 的时候，他们就只是在通过技术去消费东西，而不是创造。而你可以用一台电脑去做些事，可以编程，可以做事情，可以创造一些以前不存在的东西，做从未被做过的事。”

“但这有很多人都存在的问题”他继续说道，“他们并不尝试去做些从未被做过的事，所以他们做不了什么。但如果他们尝试去做，他们会发现其实有很多事情可以做，但之前却没有做过。”

我点头表示同意，笑了笑——这是我会说的话，巧的是在这么多人的咖啡店他选了和我说话，并以这个开头打开话匣。

这位老人转向他的咖啡，喝了一小口，然后看向我。

“事实上，我就做过很多以前没有做过的事”他边笑边说。

我不确定他是不是在和我开玩笑，但我好奇了。“是吗？所以做过什么呢？”

等了一会儿，半思考状的他似乎在尝试虚构个相当不让人印象深刻的事。

“我发明了第一代电脑。”

“呃，什么？”

“我创造了世界上第一台内程序控制计算机。它曾经占用了跟鲸一样大的房间，而我和我老婆曾经跑到它里面去做编程。”

“你的名字是？”我问到，在想这人到底是一个无家可归的疯子还是真的就是他所说的那个人。

“Russell Kirsch。”

好了，在 0.29秒后，我发现他真的没有在撒谎。Russel Kirsch 真的发明了世界上第一台内程序控制计算机，还做了很多其他事，而且真的就住在波特兰。这正如他说的。我开始 google 他，而他好像读懂了我的心思，鼓动我说：“来，我给你看。”

他站起来然后指导我看了一些网站，通过档案展示他创造过的事，然后给出一些细节，比如说：

“我还创造了第一张数码照片，那是一张我儿子的照片。”

我已经知道他不是在虚张声势了，的确，根据 google 的 结果他说的是真的。

如果没有照片中的这个男人，这张有关这个男人的照片就不会存在。 接着他开始跟我说他做过事情的历史 档案。就在我听着他的故事，通过他了解他做过些什么的时候，创造发展生产力的希望开始激荡我心。

“Russell，这真的让人印象深刻。”

“我想，那是因为我相信一句话，‘如果我们想做些什么，没有事情可以阻挡我们’。但大部分人都会反过来想——当他们想做些什么的时候，所有的事情都会阻挡他们，最后让他们一事无成。”Russell 回应我。

“等等，那句引用是什么？”

“如果我们想做些什么，没有事情可以阻挡我们。”

“这句话不错，谁说的？”

“上帝说的。”

“什么？”

“上帝说的，而只有两个人会相信这句话，你知道是谁吗？”

“不知道，是谁？”

“上帝和我，所以我真的这么做了。”

我在想——当他完成了通过档案的展示后，我不会再和这个发明计算机的人争辩了。在他展示自己对科技的贡献的 20 分钟后，他坐下来，喝完了他的咖啡，瞥了一眼他没吃完的点心，然后看了下手表，说到：

“好，我该走了。”

就这样，我们握了握手，他起身，然后走向他的车，走了。而我依然坐在那，尝试理清刚才发生的一切。我坐在那想着，感觉到他说的两件事依然在我的脑海中回荡：

• 如果我们想做些什么，没有事情可以阻挡我们。（Nothing is withheld from us which we have conceived to do.）

• 做从未被做过的事。 如果你在心中确定某个信念，决定去做它，并愿意努力去做——没有什么可以阻挡你。第二句更是不言自明，但这句话却承载了 Russell 所做过的分量，这让我想将这些话都放在网上。

“做从未被做过的事。（Do things that have never been done before）” ——来自发明计算机的那个人

现在，是时候去做事了。

根据 Wikipedia：Russell A. Kirsch(生于 1929 年) 曾领导研究小组在 1947 至 1950 年间, 创造了美国第一台内程序控制计算机 (SEAC)。到 1957 年 Kirsch 和他的团队发明了一种扫描仪, 使用 SEAC 将照片转换成数字图像。这一突破创立了卫星成像,CAT 扫描条形码, 以及桌面出版的基础。

文章来源于 Blog of Impossible Things，成文于：August 2, 2012

源地址:做从未被做过的事 作者: Joel Runyon

美東時間1月12日在紐約布魯克林家中自殺身亡的史瓦茲（Aaron Swartz），雖然年僅26歲，卻已是網路世界赫赫有名的天才，更是推動網路資訊自由分享的鬥士。

史瓦茲14歲時，便開發出第一版的RSS。RSS是簡易聚合（Really Simple Syndication）或是網站摘要（Rich Site Summary）的縮寫，這是一種以XML格式為基礎的內容傳送系統，只要使用者下載RSS閱讀器軟體，將自己喜歡的新聞或部落格等網站加入下載好的RSS閱讀器，就可隨時看到各網站更新的內容，不需要分別進入不同的網站，省去不少麻煩。史瓦茲的發明，造福了全球的網友。

後來史瓦茲進入史丹福大學就讀，但一年後退學，創辦了軟體公司Infogami，2005年Infogami與社群新聞網站Reddit合併，史瓦茲成了Reddit的合夥創辦人。

台灣人對於Reddit或許有些陌生，不過在美國，Reddit相當受到18～24歲的年輕人歡迎。根據科技網站TechCrunch報導，2012年不重複造訪人次達到4億，瀏覽次數達到370億次。使用者不僅可以看到最新新聞連結，還可進行公開討論。去年年底美國總統大選期間，歐巴馬便在Reddit平台與網友對話，最後歐巴馬回答了10個網友的問題。

然而，這一切成就早已與史瓦茲毫不相干。

根據《紐約時報》報導，2006年時，Reddit賣給《連線》（Wired）雜誌母公司康納仕集團（Conde Nast），史瓦茲的陰鬱日子就此開始，2007年他被迫離開Reddit。他曾在網站上說自己健康出了狀況、為憂鬱症所苦，甚至動了自殺的念頭。

但他仍不放棄繼續推動網路資訊免費分享的努力，自始至終他一直都這麼認為，許多資料文件的完成是動用了龐大的公共資源，應該免費開放給所有人使用。

只是，這樣的想法卻因此讓他惹禍上身。

2009年，他透過美國17家得以免費試用美國聯邦法院資料庫（PACER）的圖書館電腦系統，下載了1,900萬頁的文件資料，相當於整體資料庫的20％，並將這些資料公開，原本下載聯邦法院資料，每頁必須收費10美元。史瓦茲的舉動引來美國聯邦調查局（FBI）的調查，但最後並未起訴。

2010年，史瓦茲成立了反網路審查的政治行動組織Demand Progress，透過電子郵件和其他媒體，號召群眾針對特定議題向國會議員或意見領袖施壓。2011年，成功阻止了美國國會提出的「防止網路剽竊法案」，避免網路資訊被少數人壟斷。

2011年，史瓦茲再度採取行動，利用麻省理工學院網路，從必須付費訂閱的專業期刊學術論文資料庫JSTOR中下載將近480萬篇論文，隨後史瓦茲交出硬碟，JSTOR撤銷告訴。

但是美國聯邦調查局仍決定起訴史瓦茲，而麻省理工學院也從旁協助聯邦調查局進行調查。這項案件預計在2月時正式判決，若定罪，史瓦茲將面臨35年的有期徒刑以及100萬美元的罰鍰。

關於史瓦茲死因，他的家人控訴聯邦調查局堅持起訴以及麻省理工學院的協助，是直接的幫兇。麻省理工學院院長13日發表聲明，表示將立即進行內部調查，檢討麻省理工學院在這件事情上所扮演的角色以及當初的決定。

對於他的行為，是非對錯各有不同解讀。但他對於資訊分享的觀點，卻是值得日後所有人進行更深層的論辯。目前已經有許多研究人員在推特網站上，自動貼出論文PDF檔連結，紀念史瓦茲。以下是2008年史瓦茲在網路上發表的一份宣言中所寫的一段話：

「資訊即是權力。但就如同所有的權力，總有人急欲佔為私有。過去幾世紀以來，刊登在書籍和期刊上的科學與文化遺產，逐漸被數位化，最終掌握在少數的私人企業手中……分享並非邪惡，而是道德義務。唯有那些被貪婪蒙蔽的人，才會拒絕讓朋友複製影本。」（吳凱琳編譯）

来源:天下杂志

WinZIP创始人 ——Philip Katz

贾菡 / 文

Philip Katz，这个英年早逝惨淡一生的程序员，天才地缔造了ZIP这种压缩文件格式和Internet历史上最有名的共享软件之一——WinZIP。缔造了自由软件打败商业公司的典型成功范例。不仅如此，他的传奇经历曾激励着那么多的年轻人坚定地从事程序员的工作，实现他们的软件梦想。

1988年20岁的Philip对当时流行的BBS非常痴迷，然而一直为断线和传输大文件速度低下所困扰。为了将文件体积缩小或者将多个文件打包成一个文件便于传输，他经常使用那时美国BBS上比较流行的ARC压缩技术。然而，使用ARC需要对开发它的SEA公司付高额的费用，这一点令Philip非常不满，于是自己动手开发了一个叫做PKARC的程序。这个程序与ARC完全兼容，可以压缩和解压缩ARC文件。Philip将PKARC放在网上，以共享软件的方式为其他用户提供下载使用。

用户只需为作者支付微薄的注册费就能几乎免费使用功能毫不逊色的PKARC，因此迅速获得了大批原来ARC用户的极力拥护，这无疑是在断SEA的财路。盛怒之下的SEA将Philip告上了法庭。法庭自然只相信法律而不会考虑PKARC为用户带来了什么。最后判决禁止Philip继续开发和传播PKARC。就这样Philip被迫放弃了PKARC的开发，并为自由创新的权利被人剥夺而气愤不已。

然而这次不小的打击并没有磨灭Philip的斗志，反而激起了信奉自由和平等的他要与ARC斗争到底的决心。在这之后Philip这个天才程序员将他的智慧发挥得淋漓尽致，仅在短短的几周后，就创造了PKZIP。全新的PKZIP压缩工具，使用他发明的后来统治整个BBS世界乃至Internet的ZIP压缩算法，比ARC速度快了将近一倍，压缩率也有一定的提高。Philip继续对PKZIP实行和PKARC一样的做法，坚持对它进行免费发放。PKZIP的出现很快让遍及美国各大BBS的管理员们都先后将原有的.Arc格式的压缩文档转换成Philip的.ZIP格式，又推起了大家对Philip支持的狂潮。在这种强大攻势下，不出半年光景，原来几乎一手遮天的ARC失去了生存的空间近乎于灭绝！正如后来有人评价Philip时所说的那样：“他无疑扮演了ARC掘墓人的角色，为ARC的棺材钉上了最后一颗钉子！”

Philip以一人之力，用自己开发的自由软件击败商业软件公司产品的传奇故事使他成为众多程序员顶礼膜拜的偶像。此后Philip一直坚定不移地进行PKZIP的开发和维护工作。随着PKZIP以燎原的速度被广泛使用，ZIP这种压缩文件格式最终建立并成为DOS时代的压缩标准。直到Windows的诞生，使用Philip创造的压缩算法的软件WinZip更使ZIP格式成为Internet的传输标准，最终ZIP压缩格式成为所有压缩文档的事实标准。这些成就给这个天才程序员又增加了许多耀眼的光环。

然而，光环的背后总会有阴影的存在。这位天才程序员一直恪守自由软件的信念，长期在巨大的压力下编写软件，加之Philip的个人生活一直非常不顺利，为了释放这些压力和缓解精神上的痛楚，他没有选择合适的方式，却不正确地选择了不良的生活习惯，沾染上了许多恶习。最终长期无节制地酗酒摧毁了他的健康，也带走了他宝贵而短暂的生命。2000年4月14日，在一家汽车旅馆里，身边陪伴他的只有几个空酒瓶，就这样年仅37岁的天才程序员Philip Katz永远离开了我们。

Philip Katz的生命是如此短暂，但是，他给世人带来的恩惠却会让我们一直受益下去。现在几乎全世界的每一台个人电脑上都有用Philip创造的压缩算法生成的文档。在下载量高达到1亿4000万次、成为压缩文件标准的ZIP格式的文档开头，都嵌有Philip姓名的字头缩写字母“PK”。也许，我们可以用这种方式永远记住这个自由软件的勇士。

来源:<<程序员>>